Re: SUO: Appeal of IEEE-SA BoG Directive
Lowell,
The events that created this controversy occurred in mid August. The
Board of Governors made a decision in November regarding the vote and
how certain rules of parliamentary procedure should be interpreted.
Although this information was communicated to the SUO chair shortly
thereafter, he did not pass this information on to the SUO WG until mid
January - and only after directed to do so by the Managing Director and
Secretary of the Board of Governors and yourself.
My suggestion is that the group that hears this appeal reject it.
However if it ultimately is reconsidered by the Board of Governors they
should affirm their original decision. These are my opinions but I am
sure you are aware that I am not part of the appeals process.
The purpose of this note is to make you aware that should the BoG decide
differently regarding how the vote should be counted, that alone will
not put this issue to rest. The Board of Governors also adopted the
interpretation of the IEEE Corporate Governance Office regarding
Robert's Rules and other questions of parliamentary procedure. The SUMO
vote failed not only because of the votes cast, but also because the
motion was defective. The specifics of why it was defective are in the
emails from Lyle Smith to me and to Jim Schoening. The major points are
(1) the chair is not permitted to make a motion (2) the chair is not
permitted to participate in debate (3) the motion declared a quorum
unnecessary and is therefore a rules motion that requires a two thirds
majority vote. It is also worth noting that the SUO is a committee not
an assembly and that the chair refused to allow members to appeal his
rulings to the membership. All of these issues were pointed out to the
chair at the time and were ruled on by the IEEE Corporate Governance
Office in September. They rejected all of Jim's positions.
Bob